Oddities, musings and news from the health world

A little bit of Hendrix won't hurt you -- or your ears

January 27, 2010 | 9:31
am

"Turn that music down! You're going to ruin your hearing!" If you're a baby boomer and were suddenly handed a dollar for every time you heard that refrain (which was, ironically enough, often screamed), you'd likely be worrying less about the current state of your 401K.

We can't offer a large pile of cash, but we can offer vindication of a sort. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have compiled results from two large population studies and found that boomers tend to hear better than the previous generation did at their age.

The researchers say, for starters, that it's not concerts and music that pose the biggest threat to hearing but, rather, the daily grind caused by noisy workplaces. As a society, we've cracked down on that sort of thing.

Here's the news release and the abstract from the study, published recently in the American Journal of Epidemiology.